Government of Strangers or The Telephone Interviewer Handbook

Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington

Author: Hugh Heclo

How do political appointees try to gain control of the Washington bureaucracy? How do high-ranking career bureaucrats try to ensure administrative continuity? The answers are sought in this analysis of the relations between appointees and bureaucrats that uses the participants' own words to describe the imperatives they face and the strategies they adopt.

Shifting attention away from the well-publicized actions of the President, Hugh Heclo reveals the little-known everyday problems of executive leadership faced by hundreds of appointees throughout the executive branch. But he also makes clear why bureaucrats must deal cautiously with political appointees and with a civil service system that offers few protections for broad-based careers of professional public service.

The author contends that even as political leadership has become increasingly bureaucratized, the bureaucracy has become more politicized. Political executives--usually ill-prepared to deal effectively with the bureaucracy--often fail to recognize that the real power of the bureaucracy is not its capacity for disobedience or sabotage but its power to withhold services. Statecraft for political executives consists of getting the changes they want without losing the bureaucratic services they need.

Heclo argues further that political executives, government careerists, and the public as well are poorly served by present arrangements for top-level government personnel. In his view, the deficiencies in executive politics will grow worse in the future. Thus he proposes changes that would institute more competent management of presidential appointments, reorganize the administration of the civil service personnel system, and create a new Federal Service of public managers.

Table of Contents:

1.	People in Government	1
	What Is at Stake	3
	The Search for Political Leadership	8
	The Idea of Civil Service: A Third Force?	19
2.	Setting: The Executive Melange	34
	Who's Who?	36
	Trends	55
	Results	64
	Summary	81
3.	Political Executives: A Government of Strangers	84
	The Political Executive System	84
	The Selection Process	88
	Characteristics of Political Executives	100
	A Summary and Look Forward	109
4.	Bureaucrats: People in the Machine	113
	The Higher Career System	114
	Job Protection	133
	Bureaucratic Dispositions	142
5.	Working Relations: The Preliminaries	154
	Self-Help: The Starting Point	156
	Self-Help Is Not Enough	170
	Whom Do You Trust?	181
6.	Working Relations: The Main Event	191
	Using Strategic Resources	194
	Using People	213
	Mutual Support and Its Limits	220
	Conclusions	232
7.	Doing Better: Policies for Governing Policymakers	235
	The Case for Reform	236
	The Shape of Reform	243
	A Third Force: The Federal Service	249
	Costs and Prospects	261
	Index	265
	Text Tables
	Approximate Number of Noncareer and Career Positions, U.S. Government, by Rank, 1975-76
	Postwar Growth of U.S. Congressional Staffs
	Previous Government Experience of Incumbent Assistant Secretaries for Administration, Selected Years, 1954-74
	Government Experience of Bureau of the Budget/Office of Management and Budget Executive Personnel, 1953, 1960, and 1974
	Full-Time Political Appointments in the Executive Branch, June 1976
	Political Executives' Years of Experience in the Federal Government, 1970
	Tenure of Political Executives, 1960-72
	How Career Executive Positions Have Been Filled before and after 1967 Reforms
	Figures
	Political and Career Executive Positions in the Department of Commerce and in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, June 10, 1974
	Management Organization of the Department of the Interior, 1924 and 1976
	Index of the Growth of Mid-Level Executive Positions and Federal Civilian Employment, 1961-74
	Procedures for Hiring a Career Executive

Interesting textbook: Managers Guide to Rewards or Competitive Identity

The Telephone Interviewer Handbook: How to Conduct Standardized Conversations

Author: Patricia A Gwartney

"Survey organizations should make this handbook an integral part of their training of telephone interviewers. It covers in a clear and direct manner all aspects of the interviewing process and incorporates the latest knowledge about what makes effective interviewers in today’s challenging survey environment."
—David R. Johnson, professor of sociology, human development and family studies, and demography and former director of the Survey Research Center, Penn State University and the Bureau of Sociological Research, University of Nebraska-Lincoln